Horror

227

For ages man has feared the dark. Learn that he has a right to, especially the shadows of his own soul.

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It’s snowing outside.
I hate the snow. I have since I was a small boy. I have since the year that my father died in 1985. I was eleven at the time.
My wife is calling me to come look out the window. She says the snow is beautiful. I’m afraid to look out the window. I’m afraid that he’ll be out there. The snow just started falling an hour or two ago, but as the night lingers the storm is really suppose to hit. As the snow piles up, the stronger he’ll be. My wife calls again, but my attention is focused on the weather woman on the television screen. She is smiling as she points to a prompted screen that shows a massive arch of clouds sweeping in from Canada, and colliding with a smaller front just west of us. The two storms combined will form one. They’re calling it the worst blizzard since 1985. They say that we’ll receive close to thirty inches of accumulation within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. She can smile all she wants, but the news of the storm is like a kick in the groin to me.
If it were up to me all the doors in the house would be locked and the window shades drawn. My wife and I would crawl into bed and let heaven fall from the sky, blanketing the world in a frosty casing of white crystal. We would make love and sleep until the whole ordeal was over, and all the snow was gone.
What we wouldn’t do is go outside.
I’m afraid that she won’t go for that. She doesn’t understand my fear. That’s because I never explained it to her, never even mentioned it.
“Honey come look,” Jessica says, adding “Please.”
I am not one to deny what my wife wants, but it feels like I have a hundred pound weight in my ass, holding me in my seat. When she pleads again, I go, although be it reluctantly. I can feel a cold sweat on my brow and under my arms. I can feel my mind quivering at the memory of my lost father. I loved the man dearly. He was my best friend. My love for him mixed with the circumstance of his death makes my memory bittersweet.
It bothers me.
Because of that, I’m afraid to look out the window into the falling snow.
I’m afraid of him.
“Honey come look,” Jessica says as I mount the steps and enter the living room. She can’t feel my nerves rattling, or hear my heart beating like a jackrabbit caught in a snare. To her the snow is wonderful. To me it’s a bad dream that I have never woken from.
Jessica (in all her splendor) is standing in front of the picture window in the living room. It looks out over the front yard and down to the street. It’s just beginning to turn dark. When I see her face reflected softly in the window by the hue of the lamp, I am reminded of my mother. I’m reminded of the storm of eighty-five and how my mother stood in front of another picture window in another house and called to father and I to come watch the snow fall. I can almost smell the old furniture polish (a strange combination of lemon and pine) she used back then as I cross the room towards my wife.
“Come see, honey.” She’s waving me over towards the window. Her lips move again, but I hear my mother’s voice from days past.
“Come on, you lugs. Come watch it while its still fresh. That game will still be on when you get back.”
I swallow hard, trying to disguise the anxious act from my wife as I snuggle in behind her. She is warm against my body, and I try to take comfort in that.
Outside small white swarms of snow fall from the sky. The ground is covered, and I feel my stomach try to escape through my throat. I hate the snow. Wrapping my arms around my wife, I close my eyes, hoping that she won’t notice how very unnerved I am.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she says, and I answer in agreement. It is not beautiful, though. It’s the backdrop for every nightmare that I’ve had since I was eleven. Jessica twists in my arms.
“You aren’t even looking, silly,” she says in a playful voice. I want to share her joy, but I can’t.
“Oh, I’m not,” I reply, trying to act aloof.
She places the back of her hand against my cheek. I close my eyes and lean into her touch. “Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”
I open my eyes, and fill my vision with her face. I am marveled by the look of girlish innocence displayed there. Don’t you know, I want to scream at her, but she would have no idea of what I meant. She doesn’t know about the Snow Man. That’s what I labeled him back then for lack of a better term.
The Snow Man.
I really didn’t know what he was, and that’s all my young brain could come up with. It seemed like a logical fit. The only time I ever actually saw him was during that blizzard in eighty-five, but I know that he is still out there somewhere. I can’t tell you much about him, but after many years of turmoil I know a few things for certain.
He comes with and grows strength from the snow, and he looks like a man. What he actually is I am still not sure
Jessica turns back around in my arms, and in that insist I look at the snow. I tell myself that there isn’t enough snow yet for him to come. Somehow I know that he needs the snow for energy. How I ever derived this for certain, I don’t know, but the idea is fixed in my mind, unyielding. No, there isn’t a lot of snow yet, but there will be soon enough. Thirty inches. That’s more than we got in eighty-five. We got twenty then.
“Its so peaceful,” Jessica says, and I squeeze her lovingly. In my head I tell myself that I am just showing her the affection that a loving husband should when his wife and he are looking at something seemingly romantic like a fresh snowfall. Deep inside I know that I am clinging to her, using her as a shield to protect me against my fear.
I let my eyes flow over the landscape. The houses across the street have the lights on, and the snow falls without hesitation. Upon first glance I see nothing that should haunt me. My wife is right. It is beautiful, and my mind relaxes a notch.
Then the wind blows.
I see it, but my wife doesn’t, much like my father had seen it and my mother hadn’t. Most people won’t see it. They don’t know to look for it, or even that he exists. I know better. I am looking. When the wind blows again, I know where to watch, even though my terror tells me not to. I have to see. I have to know if it was just a cruel trick of my mind.
I don’t have to wait long before the wind sends the falling flakes scurrying sideways, and there he is at the bottom of my driveway. It’s just an indifferent outline etched by the drifting snow in the air, but I catch the curve of a shoulder, and the straight flank of a leg outlined for the briefest of seconds by the blowing wind.